MSNBC is hiring Eugene Daniels, the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association and the co-author of Politico Playbook, to co-host a roundtable show on the weekends. Daniels will be leaving Politico, where he has been a White House correspondent for several years.
The news was first reported by Puck. Daniels is already well acquainted with MSNBC, since he has been a contributor to the channel since 2021.
His exit from Politico comes amid a flurry of news, both for MSNBC and for the WHCA. Earlier on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the Trump Administration’s media team will now select the reporters in the White House press pool — a move that rips control away from the WHCA, which has historically determined the reporters who travel with and cover the president.
In response, the WHCA said the move “tears at the independence of a free press” in the U.S.
“It suggests the government will choose the journalists who cover the president. In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps,” the WHCA said in a statement shared by Daniels.
MSNBC, meanwhile, made headlines on Monday when it announced Joy Reid was losing her show. Former Biden Administration Press Secretary Jen Psaki’s show will move to primetime as part of the programming shakeup being led by new MSNBC President Rebecca Kutler.
The changes come after MSNBC’s ratings took a big hit following the 2024 election, but have enjoyed a recent increase, following the president’s inauguration. MSNBC on Monday noted its primetime viewership has increased 77% since the inauguration, with the cable channel averaging 1.4 million primetime viewers between Jan. 20 and Feb. 14. Fox News, for comparison, averaged 3 million primetime viewers the week of Feb. 10., and CNN averaged a little less than half a million viewers during that same time.
Kutler, who recently took over the top job at MSNBC after Rashida Jones exited, addressed MSNBC leadership earlier this month. The media industry veteran told MSNBC brass “our jobs are hard on a normal day, and these are not normal times.”
“We have a new company, we have new leadership, we will have new offices and we have a non-stop news cycle,” Kutler said. “I think it’s important that we all share in the exciting parts of what the year ahead is going to mean in terms of getting to build a new news organization – one that is built for us, for our needs first, to be part of a new company that is standing itself up and that we have a seat at the table at the ground floor of that, and what that’s going to look like and we get to help determine that.”
